Here's the deal on paddles for me...

I never carried one either as I grew up sailing Hobie 14's off Waikiki. I then sailed a Hobie 18 for a while. Both boats have low freeboard any anyone can paddle while lying "surfer" prone on the hull... fast forward 20 years to my mid-life crisis and my W1000 and Tybee 500 experience sailing 6.0's and I-20's. The freeboard is much higher on these boats and although I can still surf paddle from the hull, often if my crew is smaller and their arms cannot easily reach the water well enough to generate any power. Complicated by the fact that we are wearing trapeze hooks that eat fiberglass and often we are putting only our torso in front of the cross beam to keep from tearing up the deck with our hooks. I now carry a praddle (wrist paddle) as well as a lightweight telescoping paddle for the crew. We have plenty of pockets to stow things so it is no big deal and does not get in the way.

I sat 2 miles off Tybee four years ago with my wife on a hot July day becalmed for several hours... my wife was getting dehydrated (I did not bring but one water bottle as we were just going out for an hour or so we thought... with no paddle, I took my harness off and surf paddled us in with Roxanne driving. Had I not been tall enough this would have been difficult. I think about smaller crews on an F-18 where neither person may not be tall enough to efficiently surf paddle the boat. I guess you could try to scull but the high aspect ratio rudders don't do a very good job of that on these boats. The dagger boards are probably too heavy and awkward to efficiently paddle with... I guess you could bring lots of water! I remember a few years ago about the Richard Feene Tornado team that sailed down from Miami for the Steeplechase and it took them all night as they were becalmed, and the Austrailian Tornado team who almost died a few years ago because they went outside the harbor to train and ran into some trouble...no radio, no spray gear, no paddle, and spent a very hard night on their boat...the story was much more harrowing than that.

It's a personal choice for sure, when I was 16 in Hawaii I never wore a life jacket either. Today, I always wear one, and when sailing in the ocean I bring a radio, cell phone, epirb (distance racing), a paddle, flares, whistle, mirror, etc. even when training... not just racing. Besides, when training you have to get use to sailing with the gear they require you to carry.

Have fun out there!